I looked around at all my stuff strewn across the bedroom floor and spewing out of the chest of drawers. I had barely enough strength to make it to the toilet and back, never mind pack eight years’ worth of crap and organize a removal company. And a new home.

‘When do you want me to move out?’ I asked.

‘By next week, if that’s all right,’ he said, and I nodded as though this was a perfectly reasonable request. Note: I’d never done Breaking Up before, not when it involved moving out of my home. And I was on a daily 100 mg dose of an anti-psychotic that occasionally made the bread bin initiate a conversation.

Next week came. I got dressed. Jeans, white T-shirt, bottle-green cardi, and a laser-cut necklace that spelled out ‘protagonist’ in glossy black Helvetica. I filled a holdall with some random items I thought I might need – a tin opener, clean socks, the toaster – and made a packed lunch.

I had forty-one pounds and fifty-nine pence in my bank account. I eyed my wardrobe full of clothes, shoes, and Christmas presents, with trepidation. You might as well have asked me to dredge up the Titanic as ask me to find a way to pack all of it up. It didn’t occur to me to ask anyone for help. I’d put everyone through enough. I’d ruined Meg’s yellow skirt, and traumatized that poor librarian.

So I took my packed lunch and holdall and closed the door of the flat behind me, leaving my key on the table.

When I went outside it was raining. I didn’t have an umbrella. I had a coat, but no hood. This felt symbolic of my life up until that point. She had a coat, but lo, it had no hood.

I reached into my pocket in case I should find an unused poo bag from walking Mrs Hughes’s springer spaniel with which to shield my head against the downpour. No poo bag, but I did find David’s pre-paid rail pass. I’d found it in the hall and meant to give it to him, but the thought had trickled out of my head like a ribbon falling out of a ponytail.

At Newcastle I took a train headed to Birmingham New Street with lots of stops in between. I had no idea where I was going, and it didn’t matter, because the train was moving, and it was a mild comfort to be headed somewhere when my entire life had come to a complete stop. Plus, I was dry, and my arms ached from hoiking around the Tefal 4-slice stainless steel toaster that David had bought me for my last birthday.